


Your Idols Are Dead

by cypher_snake



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29957592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cypher_snake/pseuds/cypher_snake
Summary: The Girl is a bomb, or so rumor says, and Val's plan for taking back Battery City rests in her power. But The Girl doesn't want that. Doesn't want any of the worship they give to her or to the long since dead Fabulous Four
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Your Idols Are Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckycharmdust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckycharmdust/gifts).



> Pronouns!  
> The Girl she/her  
> c.a.t it/its  
> Vaya xe/xyr  
> Vamos they/them  
> Val Velocity he/him  
> Mad Gear ze/zir
> 
> Slang referenced:  
> Battery Acid - people in or recently escaped from Battery City  
> shell shocker - killjoys, specifically ones who have been in claps  
> Niña - means girl in spanish, a nickname for The Girl  
> Ir twins - Vaya and Vamos
> 
> Wrote this for @luckycharmdust as part of xyr Danger Days Playlist Prompt Exchange. I hope you like it Lucky!

"You gotta at least eat something," Vaya pushed a cup towards The Girl but she turned away, xe shook xyr head, "What ever, just meet back here when Aka Loretta wraps up."  
"We are your ride back, ya know." Vamos butted in. They snatched a pupusa off the table of food and eyed The Girl.  
"Yeah yeah, I know." The Girl said  
"Well, later Niña, gotta catch a good spot." Vaya said and the Ir twins rushed into the cavorting crowd. Surveying the scene, The Girl saw lots of shocks of different hair, zines and screen printed shirts being traded, and a few joys quickly safety pinning a wardrobe malfunction together - or perhaps that was how it was supposed to function? The crowd started getting loud as Wizard Needs Food took the stage for the first act.

The Girl sighed and hopped up on a ledge at the side of the audience space. There were various 'joys passing around drinks and laughing, draped over each other watching the show. Others were pressed against tables making out or covertly trading weapons up into the shadows provided by the clay brick wall serving as her vantage point. All of these teenagers - these kids, were trying to forget all the horror they'd been through in the music on stage. Probably some fresh from the city still had whatever BL/I static filled their heads. She'd seen a few of their black and white comics but had been spared seeing any working screen that might bleach her brains. Battery Acids were always muttering little rhymes and jingles when they thought no one could hear. The music was good for them but she also knew it was a breeding ground for aggression. Pent up from years of whatever personal hell each shell shocker held within them, all in one anonymous place with a throbbing base line. 

The walls of what had probably once been a hangar trembled as the crowd stomped. In the convoluted mass of sound The Girl could make out the steady sound of the audience chanting for Aka Lorettas to come on stage. She saw Ghost Light rush by her and wondered what kind of accident had happened backstage. The crowd died down after a few minutes of nothing and then The Girl saw a little dot of red hair approaching the stage. 

"Oh no." she said to no one in particular and only c.a.t. responded, with a curious whir and blip. Val fucking Velocity was climbing onto stage. Mad Gear was beside him in five seconds. They looked at each other then around for a mic but settled for simply shouting.  
"Killjoys of Zoooone Six! How are we doin tonight?!" Mad Gear shouted and ze put a hand to zir ear. The crowd swelled with a mixed response of groans and cheers.  
"We don't need any radio stations running out our music-" ze continued  
"Running out our liiives!" Val added on "We gotta take the City by the horns. They've been out here for too long. They'll kill your friends take your parents leave you with nothin!" Mad Gear put zir arm over Val's chest and pushed him back aways returning to center stage. Ze said something inaudible to Val and then shouted "Who here hates Better Living?" some shouts, "Who here's got themselves a blasta?" more affirmations "Then fuck those fabulous four let's do this shit! We're knocking up BL/I tomorrow soon as the radiation hits!" more cheers.  
"The 'fabulous' four didn't really want anything to do with BL/I they just shot up anyone after them. They were selfish motherfuckers but we stand for something better. We're gonna kill them until there's enough blood to dye everyone's hair red!" Mad Gear was again trying to restrain Val who kept shouting, "We're gonna level that damn city and she'll be the one to help us. We can't leave not one of those black and whites standing." The Girl is shaking her head hoping no one notices her. Mag Gear again turns to Val and he actually seems to calm down.  
"The Fabulous Four didn't do nothing for us, they abandoned our great leader Val here to nothing. But now." the crowd got quiet as ze paced the stage, "Now we've got power. We've got a girl who can blow the whole city up! But we need you. Every one of you- because getting in won't be easy. We're all gonna die out here red speckled in the heat but you- you could die in a battle for freedom!" The Girl couldn't take it any more. She hopped down from her wall and slipped out one of the bent sheets of metal where a clay retaining wall had not been built. It crumbled at her touch and she wondered how old it was. How old was the desert? How old were the ideas Val and ever faithful Mads were speaking of? Beats and chords thrummed the concert space once more and she slipped away, solemnly smiling.

The Girl breathed in the cool air of the desert night. The concert had been full of sweat and a heat that could be comforting but was soft and clingy. It was a loud heat that wanted you jumping and dancing to keep it multiplying. But the cool out here was slow, it was spacious, reminding you of the thoughts you didn't want to come back to - homing birds given room, in that muted quiet, to find what they weren't looking for. The Girl wonders what she is. What she isn't. What they, the kids in that building, want her to be. They want her to be their hope. She didn't understand much about her power, if she was in fact a bomb, or maybe just hypersensitive to all the hurt carried behind masks. 

If there was one thing Val Velocity was good at it was turning hurt to fear. Behind every arrogant thing he said or trend he copied she could feel a vibrating drone of a terror. And he was good at giving it to others, like at the concert, like to the rest of the Ultra Vs. She knew that at one point there had been more of them. Voy had been together with the other Ir siblings but disappeared after a clap. And Veil she didn't know about at all except for a few of her tags still on some buildings.

"You're part of our crew. We're the Ultra Vs and we're all you have." Val had said on many an occasion for quarreling. Did they have each other? Sort of, it was a funny thing what someone always on your nerves becomes when faced with a common enemy. They say only when faced with an enemy do you find your true friends. But are they genuine bonds if tainted with the most static feelings? You see fear, much like hope, is electric. They both power so much and stream out so many sparks it's often hard to tell which one has started the wildfire.

A hot wind blew at The Girl's back and a few zines from inside the concert hall drifted towards the old car frame she was sitting on. "Our Savior" read one and scribbled in half dry sharpie was a haunting portrait of The Girl herself. Clad in a teotard, mouth open, eyes blank, her curls enveloped by an explosive halo of red and yellow. She tentatively looked inside to see grotesquely drawn cartoons of Dracs and a guide on how to supercharge a blaster. On the back it said, "Save the city and she'll steal your heart." And another picture of her, this time leaning over a killjoy's shoulder and kissing them. Instead of her usual single blank dog tag she was saving for picking a name, her jacket, and tank top, the drawing of her was wearing a choker and "cleverly" cut up t shirt exposing twice as much cleavage as she actually had. The Girl almost puked at this caricature of her own image and threw down the zine. A tear rolled down her cheek as thunder slowly kneaded in her chest.

The Girl ran. She didn't care where she was running. She just needed to be away. The ground raced behind her feet. "No!" She shouted and pounded to a stop only to grab a rock and throw it sloppily across the parched ground. She scrunched her face, unsatisfied with the throw. She took some smaller rocks and threw them at an old dried out skeleton with branching arms speckled with holes from woodpeckers and worms alike, once a majestic saguaro cactus, now white and crumbling in the wind. The rocks were far behind her in seconds. Her cheeks were frigid from the salt marshes of evaporating tears. She doubled over crying and catching her breath only to see c.a.t. trotting after her.  
"Go away!" she shouted and pelted the robot with a few more rocks before taking off again. She ran and her hair grew electric, frizzing up around her but she didn't notice. She ran past the stars into all her scars and pain.

The four killjoys, her cousins who raised her, were dead. They really were dead. None of their messages, nothing they'd done had lived on except her. And she didn't even want to live. Party Poison had been no leader, just the most flamboyant in a group of a bunch of shy kids hiding behind spray painted blasters. Who gave teenagers guns anyways? No- she knew that she was the one thing keeping Poison duct taped together and Val- Val made himself into a paper farce just like Party out of spite for her. The feeling of being so intertwined and somehow responsible for both crimson killjoys made her stomach churn with unease.

The Girl stopped in her tracks, noticing a looming shadow in the piercing moonlight. A quiet rusty orange meets her eyes in the darkness and she is face to face with a colossal being dusted as to now be seen as only a monument. The hulking mass of rusting parable lay in the desert. Far from the rest of its body, the legs and torso, the robot, droid, mech suit - legend, were curled into the memory of a child huddled in their bed laying low ears covered from the screams of a storm.

"DESTROYA?" The Girl whispered. She walked closer and touched the side of its form, causing a ripple of light to be sent amongst its wires. She jumped back in surprise as Destroya shifted and began to whir from the energy she'd given it. "Destroya- what did I do!?" She asked watching the rest of the droid slowly regain function. The robot slowly sat up and lifted a hand towards The Girl. C.a.t. hopped up and circled its palm before flopping down to sleep. The Girl tentatively followed after it. Destroya whirred, its screen glowed as energy kept flowing from where she sat in its hand, to the rest of it.

"I thought- I thought you weren't real... that you were broken for good. They say you'd only awaken when you were going to fix everything…" The robot blinked and hummed.

"You're not going to kill me or something are you?" Destorya beeped inquisitively  
"I can't fix this place. I'm not their savior and neither is Val. He thinks... well he thinks that we can blast our way into the future. But then they- the kids... they all think I'm the one who'll save everyone. I'm just a girl- I'm not a hero." The Girl rubbed the sunbaked copper and steel.  
"Neither are you huh?" The massive droid's lights blinked a few times.  
"Yeah..." The Girl paused and watched c.a.t. bat at some of the false god's wires. "They'll still say you're a deity. Still make some sort of rationale for your being here." She waved her hands sarcastically at the word rational. What was she but a girl alone with a bunch of broken storms of teenagers? "No matter how long you sit here they'll keep drumming up more tags for the graffiti bible. And what'll happen? You can sit here and rust in peace while they go on building you into a god but I'll have to go back. They already think of me as too much. Party Poison might have been brave to save me from BL/I but whatever they, or anyone else thinks is in me- they're going to be mistaken. I can't save them. I don't think anyone can."

C.a.t. jumped onto her shoulder and nuzzled against her cheek and nodded its head up to the sky which was fading from the piercing blue of dusk to a proper curtain for the milky way's arm to stretch out across. The night was cool with all the calm that a city could never keep around too long was quiet without the held breaths and whispers of the nest was filled to the brim with the emptiness of ghosts. And The Girl cried. Cried because she was so terrified of becoming the bomb she held inside. Because she never wanted to be the only one left. Never wanted to be someone's hope. Cried because there was no one left.


End file.
